Heart of Stone
by MournfulSeverity
Summary: It had been there, reflected in the green of Potter's eyes, held lovingly in memory. How could Severus ignore it? How could he forgo his only chance, his only way back to her when Potter had just shown him where the resurrection stone rested? Severus had to find it.


**Disclaimer: Everything belongs to JK Rowling.**

**This fic was written for the Unhappily Ever After Fest. Therefore, it doesn't have a happy ending. It was birthed from the crevices of my own broken heart. A fulfillment of some of my own deepest wishes. Enjoy.**

**Prompt: The Resurrection Stone can't being them back. Why are you covering your hands in dirt just to find the key to your own death?**

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His head pounded. The beating of his hardened heart reverberated inside his vacant mind, rattling off thoughts before they slipped behind the barriers that gave him control. He shouldn't be alive. _He shouldn't be free. _He shouldn't be the recipient of the pity that glossed Poppy's eyes.

Severus wanted to sleep. He yearned to slip beneath the darkness of dreams and dare to never return.

The war was over, but the guilt he had painted himself with in years past remained. Paint that had permanently stained his skin in its own heavy shade of black. Black that he had swathed himself in for so long, that had given him his only means of escape for years. Now, he was here. In white checked with blue. In stiff sheets and bandages. Magic meant to heal, but that could never repair the things that lived in his mind.

The scarlet of blood was nearly gone, remaining only in the crevices of his fingers. Noticeable only if he looked hard enough. But, he could still see it. Could remember the dark shade of red that covered his hands, drenched his throat. It was yet another color he saw his world in. A color that wrapped around "could have beens" and left him here in this hospital bed to wait.

His life had been a series of waiting. Waiting for Dumbledore to protect Lily. Waiting for the Potter boy to turn 11. Waiting for the Dark Lord's return. And now, he waited for his own collection. Waited for the flames of the castle Floo to ignite in brilliant green, to birth the form of a mediwizard who would come to take him to St. Mungo's. His knight in shining armor of sorts — spiriting him away from this castle in which most of his life had been wasted. Dragging him towards his happily ever after. The final act of a story in which his life would finally, _truly _be his.

Waiting. He was bloody tired of waiting.

His hand fumbled, finding his wand beside him within an array of his other belongings: Bloodied clothes, empty bottles of what used to be antivenom, blood replenishers. The slender bit of wood felt familiar in his fingers. The last bit of binding between the shattered pieces of his world.

Severus slid out from beneath the safety of his blankets, planting his feet on the chilly floor of the hospital wing. He stood, clutching at the thin cotton of his shapeless hospital gown. His hands clasped together the split that ran down its back. He was headmaster, no matter how funny that word sounded in his mouth. He had been a professor, a Head of House to the hundreds of bodies that still wandered within these castle walls. He would _not _allow the reputation he had built to crumble beneath a wayward breeze.

He had begun teaching here sixteen years previously. Had entered as a servant, as a shade of himself. Perhaps it was only appropriate that he left just the same. He had come here in Lily's name, had served his penance in return for her protection. Now, it was time to return home. To figure out what _exactly _that word meant to him.

_Home. _

Severus stepped from the hospital wing doors and into the crowd of survivors that filled the hall, unnoticed in the chaos that still dwelled there. The castle devoured him. The swarm of bodies covered in coagulated blood seemed to swallow him in their swells. He was invisible. Lost inside a crowd of people he knew so intimately. Students, colleagues, warriors. They paid him no mind; questions left unvoiced, as if a spell had been cast upon the entirety of the castle's inhabitants.

His eyes scanned the horde, adding students and staff to his list of survivors. How many had apparated away in the minutes that had passed? How many lay dead in a classroom just beyond here? His eyes lingered on the broken families, on the red rimmed eyes. Both of which he found in a sea of ginger. On the black-haired boy among them.

_Potter._

Dumbledore's message had been passed. That, Severus was sure of. The boy may have been blurred by the memories that spilled from Severus inside that shack, but he _had _been there. Had pressed the cold vial against his cheek. But, after? Had Potter gone to the pensieve? Sacrificed himself?

The black tunnels of Potters' eyes met his, and it was all too easy. His occlumency barriers were poorly practiced. Practically nonexistent. The guilt in his pale, lightly freckled features too apparent.

Severus pushed, playing into Potter's own culpability. The tunnels expanded, and Severus felt himself falling within. Visions splashed across the surface, muddled by Potter's own confusion of events. Severus saw himself reflected, his body crumpled and bloody before giving way to something he hadn't expected. To _Lily. _At the park, beside the Cokeworth river, beneath the sorting hat... in Severus' own arms. To Dumbledore, to the promises shared between them, to the complaints he himself had made inside the office, to the message that had brought this all forward. His own voice splintering as he surmised what Potter now knew. What Potter should have died for.

_He had given too much. _Had spilled too many secrets in his delirium, his blood loss. And still, it didn't answer how Potter stood amongst the living. He pushed harder, desperate to understand as his own memories spun around him. The scene melted into the shadows of towering trees and undergrowth. To the gold of a snitch glinting in the marmalade of a rising sun. And within its hidden cavity — _something painfully familiar _.

A polished stone, diamond in shape and obsidian in color. A stone that had been cracked across the surface, stealing away the horcrux within but leaving the magic of the hallow intact.

He pulled out, the world of actuality swirling dizzyingly around him. He saw, only for a moment, his own confusion reflected in Potter's eyes. Then, he was running, his footsteps leaden on the stone floor beneath him. They pounded in rhythm with his heartbeat which rattled against his chest. His throat burned, his breath caustic against the puncture along his flesh. Severus paid it no mind, the walls of his occlumency having fallen away to rest on one single thing: the resurrection stone.

His way back to her.

He darted from behind the large, mahogany doors; weaved through the people that still meandard along the broken courtyard, no longer seeming to know what to do with themselves. He had lost his composure amongst these people he knew so well. People he could have named, had he not been so focused on one singular element. The pang in his being, the longing that would bring a whisper of her back to him was more important.

He hadn't allowed himself any semblance of desire since her death nearly 17 years ago. Now, he was consumed by it.

Severus found himself along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, his chest heaving as it fought to draw in the early morning spring air. Little had drawn him to this place in the years that preceded today. He'd been brought to the forest by necessity only, no longer finding comfort amongst the canvas of green.

This had been their place — his and Lily's. They had hid themselves in the shadows here, the black of their robes blending with this place where few dared to go. Had she been alive, he might still have come here. Then again, it had been her death that brought him back to this castle to begin with. His hand in it that had sentenced him to these grounds.

Her laughter no longer echoed along the branches, bouncing along the trunks of trees as the melody of her laughter found him. Instead, it was silent. Made cold and unwelcome by the absence of her song.

There had been days when they wandered further, in search of the glimmer of a unicorn, but only ever finding opalescent hairs that had snagged along loose branches. A search similar to the one he faced now.

He ignored the uneven ground, the twigs that dug into the bottoms of his soles, the gooseflesh that ran across his arms, his legs. He kept walking despite the shiver that had wormed its way through the gown and beneath his skin; the cold having settled amongst the spaces of his bones.

He searched frantically. His eyes darting amongst the trees as he looked for familiar patterns — for the ones he had seen in Potter's memories. How far did the Forbidden Forest sprawl? _How far in had Potter walked? _

He paused in his search, shaking wearily. Fruitless. This endeavor was fruitless. Like all the others he had taken.

His arm lifted, trembling in what he told himself was only the cold of Scotland air. " _Accio resurrection stone! _" His voice shattered the stillness surrounding him, his words falling to the ground as leaves to be forgotten.

Nothing.

Where had the Dark Lord lain in wait? Surely there was a clearing, footprints. Potter had found him, hadn't he? Severus' eyes fell to the ground once more as he walked, looking for the disruption of footprints upon the forest floor, the destruction only mankind could bring.

He was hungry. A growl lived within his stomach that couldn't be placated by food. He had known of the stone's existence since it graced the wrinkled and knobbed finger of Dumbledore. The same finger that had grown black from decay beneath the curse that lay within the ring, biding its time. Only when Severus learned what the stone truly was, did he understand Dumbledore's need to clutch it in his palm. What Severus would do now to do the same — scour a forest, apparently.

His vision swam. Images of green and brown melded together, blurring into a singular muddy color. He flung out one hand in a jerking motion, resting it on the trunk of a thick tree beside him, its bark rough beneath his touch. The other came to his throat, grazing the bandage that protected the still fresh wound, now wet and sticky. It stained his fingers when they were pulled away.

He knew he wasn't supposed to be here — that he should be in the hospital, that he should be anywhere that wasn't the leaf-strewn floor of the Forbidden Forest. He _knew _what he was searching for was pointless, that it was little more than a stone. He knew _a lot _of things, but knowing and doing were different, and he was so close.

" _Appare Vestigium!" _A breath of silence, a beat of a heart before two more words trickled with bitterness from his lips. "Harry Potter."

He blinked, his eyes opening once more, allowing his surroundings to fall back into shape — into something recognizable. Into the impression of a large footprint, and the crushed foliage beneath it, as clear now as if someone had beat it into the earth. Smaller prints of the people that had followed. One singular set stood out, illuminated despite the shadows. Glowing, pulsating, leading through the forest in wavering undulations, like a crude set of markers left behind by the fears of a lost child.

Severus followed it, winding around trees, slipping beneath branches — taking the trail that Potter had walked only hours before. His prints were still fresh, not yet dulled by time or muddied by the tracks of animals. They sparkled across the umber undergrowth like stars sketched across a cloudless sky. _Thank Salazar for magic._

He paused at a particularly congested constellation of steps, observing the turns that Potter had taken, replaying snippets of memory that the boy had shown him. Lupin, Black, Potter, _Lily. _They had stood here.

He fell to his knees, broken branches sharp beneath his sudden weight, the sound of their cracking rent the still morning air. He barely registered the damp chill of earth as he scrabbled frantically against the compact ground, digging through it with his bare debris of the forest floor caked beneath his too-long nails. He ignored the warm blood that seeped from the gash in his once again scarlet-stained throat. Blood that dripped from beneath the plaster meant to keep the outside world from contaminating him further, that fell to the earth on which he crouched, soaking into the forest floor, leaving yet another part of him inside the castle's grounds.

It was here, he knew it. Had _seen _it. Had found the stone reflected in the green that had nearly led him from this world. Green that, even years after her death, he could still only ever associate with Lily. Green that had kept him going all this time.

Now he searched for black. For the glint of a triangle, a circle, a line etched across the point. He crawled, the tip of his wand radiating with light, combating the darkness of the canopy above. His skin was numb — whether from cold or obsession, he wasn't sure — impervious to the ground that clawed at his legs and sliced through his skin.

He crawled, as the infant this endeavor had made him to be. Desperate. Obsessed over a bit of rock when perhaps he should have been searching for his dignity. On his hands and knees, the near entirety of him exposed, concealed only by thin cotton which had sagged to brush the ground. Some distant part of him hoped he hadn't wandered into centaur terrority. Surely the sight of him here and now could blind a herd.

Severus ran his hands along the shoots of plants, fallen bark, rough stones… smooth onyx. _Onyx _.

He reached for it, the tip of his thumb running along a familiar crack that Dumbledore had put there.

His breath was frozen, his heart pounding as harshly as before. _The stone _. He had found it. It had been waiting all this time. Laying right there, beneath the bits of bark and branches. And suddenly, it was all within his reach.

He fumbled it between his fingers, hesitant for the moment now that it had come. Seventeen years had culminated to this point. He was approaching middle age, the crazed desire for what he had lost still lurking in the black of his own eyes. He would be offering himself to her. Not as the person he wished to be, but as the one he had become.

Scarred, broken, bloody.

The rock rolled against his palm as he stood, trying to assemble any shred of normalcy. With eyes pressed shut, he turned it again — a second time, a third, —the image of who he longed to see defined in his memory.

And then he stood there, waiting, his eyes still firmly closed. Hoping. How long had it been, since he had allowed himself the luxury of hope?

" _Severus."_

His grip around the stone loosened, his shoulders shaking with a sob he didn't know had been held inside his chest. It spilled out into the night, breaking free from the prison he had built inside himself. Freed by the dulcet tones in which his name had been muttered. The letters of it swollen with love.

He shifted, his eyes opening, not willing to waste another second with her.

"Mum."

Her lank hair and gaunt face — a curse she had bestowed upon him — was not the one he had been anxious to see. Had not been the one he had dragged himself into the forest for. But, perhaps, it was the one he had needed all along.

She was there, standing before him, her feet planted firmly upon the ground as if she could feel it. She wasn't flesh, he knew it. If he reached out to touch her, his fingers would have tingled with chill, would have slipped beneath her outline. But, something about her _was _substantial. There was no static around her edges — she was more than mere air and apparition. Severus wondered if rather than a spirit, it was her soul at which he was gazing. But, he knew, as the stone rested in his hand once more, that it was the most she had to give.

He found himself wordless, wishing only for a hug he could never receive. To be clutched inside her arms — the warmth of her embrace doing away with the chill of his body. There were no words that could be muttered, shouted from hillsides, or whispered in the dark of candlelight, that he could use to make her understand. No words heavy with enough meaning that she could know what it was she meant to him.

"I miss you." It was all he could give. Three syllables of reiterated trash. Words that had likely been said on these very grounds already by Potter himself. Less than she deserved

"And, I'm sorry." His voice cracked, fractured with too many apologies he had held in for too many years. The weight of them settling in the confines of his stomach. Sorrys that he owed to a vast expanse of people he had known. "I'm sorry for what I've become, for the things that I've done. Sorry that I was too easily intoxicated by words and empty promises to become the very thing I said I wouldn't." He spoke slowly, the words too large and heavy to fit through his mouth at once. Too sharp around the edges as they clawed their way from his throat.

He felt the warm dripping of his tears, the salt of which carving tracks along his cheeks. Cheeks that burned with embarrassment, childish impunity. Severus blinked them away, drops of his weakness falling to the ground.

His eyes closed as he regained control over himself. Control that was shattered beneath the ice that grazed his skin, the cold of her death reaching out to him in reassurance. Her voice but a whisper as she spoke.

"You're sorry for bravery? For human mistakes? For your choices of wrong that were dulled by right? There is little in this world as powerful, as driving as the pain of regret, and you have experienced it in measures that fuel nightmares." Severus looked at her once more, black meeting black as she smiled in sympathy. "An apology can't undo the things that are done, only actions. _Severus, _you have done your best, you have been brave, and for that, I am proud."

"I love you." He stuttered in response— the words he hadn't said enough. Words that, until now, he thought he'd been too late to declare. Had he _ever _said them? Spoken them when he was younger? He remembered only the slamming of doors, the silent tears that had been visible only in the redness of her eyes.

And now she was fading, the call from beyond the grave coming to collect her once more. Her eyes were fixed on something — someone — that he couldn't see.

"And I love _you _, Severus." Her eyes were holding his once more, the black she shared with him fixated on his face, on the lines that had been etched into his skin in the intervening years. Her voice was soft, pulled back by the beyond. He wanted so desperately to cling to her, to draw her back to his arms. To pull her soul into the realm of the living, until he could hold his mum once more.

There was never enough. Never enough time, never enough apologies, never enough chances. He couldn't let himself be tempted yet again. He couldn't break her peace… only find his own. If he saw Lily now, how could he let her go?

His fingers relaxed, his grasp on the stone loosening, palm flattening. Severus' gaze fell towards it. He couldn't bear to watch the light of his mum be snuffed again. The tip of his blackthorn wand rested against the stone, his words a whisper in the night as the chill of her faded touch lingered on his skin.

" _Evanesco _."

He was tired now, the hunger gone. Burned away. He had walked too long. Too far. On a road not meant for walking. And now the forest had grown too thick, and he couldn't see even the broken path anymore.

And he had done enough, hadn't he? Fought enough.

He moved once more, his wand rising to rest against his throat, another spell lingering on his lips.

He had painted the world red with his bravery. He was no Gryffindor. There was no bravery left within him now. No light that still pulsed with the fire that had burned inside him. For once, he would take the easier choice, even if it wasn't the right one.

A slash. Sparks of white. Then nothing.

He was gone.

He was decay. Bone, flesh, dirt. Absence. His eyes stared, seeing nothing. The fabric of his soul gone, departed into whatever lay beyond. Into heaven, into nothingness, into neverending black.

Into terrible peace.

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**This fic is in no way meant to romanticize suicide. If you are suicidal, please seek out someone that you can talk to. You are loved. You are worthy of life.**


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